You Must Remember This

This episode was originally released on January 6, 2015. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.

This is the story of how Bette Davis evolved from a wannabe starlet who was constantly told she was too ugly for movies, to the most powerful woman in Hollywood, by playing heroines that had never been seen on screen before — to borrow a term from Davis herself, sympathetic “bitches.” After Pearl Harbor, the tenacious Bette became the figurehead of the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen staffed by stars, which was the locus of the industry’s most visible support of the troops on the home front.

The Hollywood Canteen was a catalyst for propaganda in more ways than one, aims Hollywood furthered by telling the story of the Hollywood Canteen in a movie called, um, Hollywood Canteen, starring Davis, John Garfield, Barbara Stanwyck, Peter Lorre and other celebrities as “themselves.” The movie and most press accounts of the Canteen portray it as a miraculous force for good in the world, which it probably was, but that narrative leaves out a lot, including illicit affairs, a murder, and an FBI investigation whose findings would have an impact on the blacklist of the following decade

Hollywood’s 1960s began with Billy Wilder winning three Oscars for The Apartment. But Wilder’s biggest success would also prove to be his last film to be afforded such respectability, as Wilder largely abandoned the type of material that the Academy embraced, and veered gleefully into disreputability. Of the 9 films Wilder made in the 20 years after The Apartment, in this episode we’ll pay special attention to three that were engaged with the rapidly changing culture – in Hollywood and beyond: One, Two, Three (1961); Avanti (1972); and Fedora (1978).

(00:00) Wilder’s Long Journey to Weirdness

(10:50) Wilder in the 1960s and pre-production on Avanti!

(22:18) Italy, Juliet Mills, and Generational Strife

(29:18) Critical Reappraisal and Legacy

(36:50) Fedora and the Ghost of Sunset Boulevard

(46:04) “A quintessential old man’s film”

(56:25) Wilder’s Last Films and Later Life

This episode was originally released on December 14, 2021. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.

In the mid-1960s, 47 year-old Dean Martin proves he's still got it by knocking the Beatles off the top of the pop charts, and by launching his long-running TV show, which brought a version of his nightclub act into America’s living rooms every week. But his middle-aged drunk schtick sours as the decade of hippies and Vietnam wears on. Sammy Davis Jr has his own challenges, living up to the expectations of a new generation of activists--and he only makes matters worse by embracing Richard Nixon. After disastrously dabbling with Motown, Sammy records “The Candy Man” -- a silly novelty single that he hated, but which ended up saving his career.

As a cameraman during World War II, George Stevens shot footage of the liberation of Dachau that showed the world the horrors of the Holocaust – and scarred Stevens himself for life. Pre-war, he had been a director of frothy comedies; post-war, he committed himself to making epic films about “moral disasters.” This yielded a number of masterpieces – A Place in the Sun, Giant, Shane – but by the mid-60s, though more in demand than ever as a director, Stevens felt he lost touch with the audience. He only released one film in the 1960s, The Greatest Story Ever Told – an epic about Jesus, and an epic flop – and then, in an attempt to come full circle to his comedy roots, concluded his career with The Only Game in Town (1970), an awkward mashup of old and new featuring the two biggest transitional stars of the day, Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor.

(00:00) Nothing Lasts Forever

(11:16) The Liberation of Dachau: “Where I really learned about life”

(19:25) Making The Greatest Story Ever Told

(34:43) Editing and Releasing The Greatest Story Ever Told

(45:34) Enter Warren Beatty and Liz Taylor: The Only Game in Town

(01:03:53) The Berlin Film Festival Controversy

This episode was originally released on October 28, 2014. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.

Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift were best friends and co-stars in three films. The first, A Place in the Sun, is an undisputed classic which captures both stars at the peak of their talents and physical beauty. The shoot of the second, Raintree County, was interrupted by a horrible car accident in which Clift’s face was disfigured. This episode tracks Taylor’s relationship with the troubled Clift, from their first, studio-setup date through his untimely death — the result of what some have called “Hollywood’s slowest suicide.”

Long an antagonist to Hollywood’s norms (not to mention its actresses), Preminger began the 1960s by directing a massive blockbuster (Exodus) and earning his second Oscar nomination (for directing The Cardinal). But towards the end of the decade, with 1967’s Hurry, Sundown, he began a run of six films which attempted to respond to changing times, all of which flopped. We’ll focus primarily on two of these: the much-maligned Skidoo, an indictment of both hippies and the true American establishment which Preminger prepared for by dropping acid with Timothy Leary; and the unfairly forgotten Such Good Friends, the rare sex comedy of the era to understand the extent to which the sexual revolution did little to liberate women from the expectations of men.

(00:00) Otto Preminger: “Always kind of weird”

(07:16) From Batman to Bunny Lake

(19:13) Otto Goes Gonzo: Hurry, Sundown & Skidoo

(34:18) Generational Clash: Nilsson vs. Preminger

(45:19) Junie Moon and Such Good Friends

(57:28) The Final Years and Films

This episode was originally released on July 4, 2017. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.

Jean Seberg made her first two films, Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse, for director Otto Preminger, a tyrannical svengali character whose methods would traumatize Jean for the rest of her life and career. No wonder she rebelled against this bad dad figure by marrying a handsome French opportunist. Meanwhile, Jane Fonda moves to New York, joins the Actors Studio, takes up with her own hyper-controlling male partner, and tries to define herself as something other than Henry Fonda’s daughter.

Hitch’s most iconic decade – a decade of Technicolor grandeur and peril inflicted on famous blondes – came to an end in 1964 with Marnie, a critical and box office flop which wounded Hitchcock’s ego and left him unsure how to move forward in a changing world. His subsequent four final films – Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot – are the result of his efforts to mix up his formula for an era in which he felt ripped off by James Bond and mourned the decline of the Golden Age stars.

(00:00) Presenting Alfred Hitchcock

(06:49) Hitchcock, Psycho, and the Rise of Television

(10:47) Marnie and Tippi Hedron

(20:06) Hitchcock/Truffaut

(26:20) Torn Curtain: Hitch vs. Newman

(35:26) Topaz: “A most unhappy picture to make”

(45:00) Frenzy: Hitchcock’s Most Explicit Film

(55:51) Family Plot: Hitchcock Slows Down

This episode was originally released on April 11, 2017. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.

The quintessential “Hitchcock blonde,” Grace Kelly had an apparently charmed life. Her movies were mostly hits, her performances were largely well-reviewed, and she won an Oscar against stiff competition. Then she literally married a prince. Was it all as perfect as it seemed? Today we’ll explore Kelly’s public and private life (and the rumors that the two things were very different), her working relationship with Hitchcock, her Oscar-winning performance in The Country Girl, the royal marriage that took her away from Hollywood and Kelly’s very specific spin on blonde sexuality.

Vincente Minnelli was the ultimate creature of the studio system, spending twenty years working for MGM and perfecting a distinct brand of big-budget, beautifully designed, often musical entertainment, from Meet Me in St. Louis to An American in Paris, The Bad and the Beautiful to Gigi. Minnelli’s late period begins with two films he made toward the end of his run at MGM, his proto-psychedelic remake of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) and Two Weeks in Another Town, which painted such a caustic picture of moviemaking decadence that MGM forcibly recut it. Knocked off his game, with both his faculties and his power waning, Minnelli made a trilogy of films about reincarnation and rebirth, one of which starred his famous daughter, Liza.

(00:00) Minnelli's Forgotten Masterpiece

(06:08) The Ultimate Creature of the Studio System

(09:51) Inventing the MGM Musical

(12:48) Was Judy Garland's Husband Gay?

(19:16) Gigi

(24:12) Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

(43:27) Orgies and Nervous Breakdowns

(52:11) Minnelli's My Fair Lady

(56:09) Barbra Streisand's Past Lives

(01:01:20) Liza